Chapter 31 #2
Medics are here, getting Wes out of the room and pronouncing Annica dead. The other officer guides me to the ladder, where
I climb down before him. He leads me down the stairs, to the living area, where people are gathered. Wes goes out on a stretcher,
his parents following behind, his mother’s face in anguish. She might be screaming, but I don’t hear it over the melody in
my head. Our friends are outside the front door when the officer leads me out to the other ambulance. I feel Dani’s hand grab
for me, and I see Asher’s eyes. Terrified. I imagine that’s what Wesley’s eyes looked like while Annica stabbed him. While
I was off cheating on him, again. The thought makes me physically ill. The medics look over me when we get to the truck and
wrap me in a blanket when they realize none of the blood is mine, aside from what’s coming from my torn-up feet. They shine
lights in my eyes and ask me questions.
“She’s in shock,” one of them says to the officer.
Our friends stand off to the side of the truck, as the one transporting Wes drives away. When the small black bag is carried
out of the house next, the crowd murmurs, looking around, wondering who is missing. If this were a movie, the scene would
play in slow motion with a somber song. I suppose that’s how I’m seeing it now.
“Who’s in there?” I hear Dani yell. “Who is in there?”
I just stare ahead.
“Where’s Annica?” Dani looks around. “Sloane, was she up there with you?”
Her voice sounds far away, like when you hear someone talking while you’re asleep.
The voice that wakes you from a dream. Or a nightmare.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? When the medics don’t get adequate responses from me, I am loaded into the back of the ambulance next.
With Annica’s body. I stare at the zipped-up black bag for the entire ride to the hospital, wondering how someone could hate someone else that much.
And how I could be so blind to not see it.
I thought about the look in her eyes when she held the gun up to me, and
the way they looked wholly black in the low light of the attic. I didn’t recognize those eyes. They weren’t the same fiery,
competitive eyes I met freshman year; they looked wild, scared, and even a little . . . relieved. She must have been tired—she
had to be.
The ambulance pulls into Saint Ann’s Hospital on the island, and I learn that Wes is being airlifted to another hospital in
Boston. I hate hospitals with their all-white interiors and lights bright enough to make anyone look sickly. They put me in
a room alone. Nurses come in to check my blood pressure and shine lights in my eyes. They clean up my feet and bandage them.
They ask questions and I give them nods and shakes of my head, but I can’t form the words to talk about what happened.
An hour or so later, Detective Grange shows up to the hospital. He stands at the doorway and knocks twice on the frame.
“Hello, Sloane,” he says from the door. “Can I come in?”
I nod.
He sits in one of the visitors’ chairs off to the side of the room and lets out a long sigh. “I spoke to a few of the officers
at the house, but I think the only person who really knows what happened is you.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes. I know he wants details but the whole memory feels jumbled in my head like the day after a blackout. I continue to stare down at my hands.
“Did you read the story?” I say finally.
“I did.” More silence. “Holland . . . he wrote your friend as the murderer.” I think of the photos Miles had in his apartment.
Recent ones of me, and Annica. He was watching me. So in turn he was watching her. I let my head drop to my hands as more
tears fall. I should’ve just read the goddamn story the night Miles showed up at my apartment. I would’ve known then. It wouldn’t
have saved everyone, but it would’ve saved Wes. “Do you think you could walk me through what happened tonight?”
I tell him what I can. He doesn’t pry for answers like he usually does, only nods along. When my friends show up at the door,
Grange stands to leave.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he says before leaving. But I am not all right, not really.
The group doesn’t stay long, and we don’t say much. The uncomfortable silence paired with Dani’s sniffling goes on for only
a half hour before Asher tells them all to leave me be, and that he will stay here until my mom comes. I wish he wouldn’t.
When they’re gone he continues to stand in the door frame.
“How are you feeling?” he finally asks.
“Like I should’ve been with him tonight, not you.” I pull my feet back up to the bed and lie down again. I turn so I don’t
have to face him.
I hear him walk over to the bed and slip off his shoes.
He sits down on the edge, before lying next to me.
His hands start to rub my back, hesitantly, like he’s not sure if this will help.
I turn toward him and I want to tell him to leave, to just let me feel bad in peace, but when I open my mouth my voice cracks and I cry instead.
He holds me to him like he did not even four hours ago now, but under completely different circumstances.
“I wish she would’ve just killed me,” I cry into his shirt. “I do, then I wouldn’t have to live with this anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” he whispers.
I continue to cry, and from the uneven rise and fall of his chest, I think Asher is crying too.